


That Pain Is Love

by cminerva



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Sex, Tahiti flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 15:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20137639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cminerva/pseuds/cminerva
Summary: May had earned her rest and the chance to see Coulson again. And then she does. Major spoilers for the Season 6 two-part finale.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hereforthephilindafics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereforthephilindafics/gifts).

> I’ll be honest and say I don’t fully understand what memories this LMD is supposed to have. I’m writing based on the assumption that he has everything up to the time he entered the Framework as that data would already be stored. Beyond that point, Fitzsimmons would have used their own memories to update him on what they knew and the rest of the team have shared some things verbally. For the purposes of this fic, we’ll go with that!

When May woke from the cryo chamber Daisy was there to welcome her back. She accepted Daisy’s clinging embrace and even placed a few distracted kisses along the younger woman’s brow as she tried to figure out how the hell she had scraped by this time. As her mind pushed through the relief and disorientation, a nagging pang of grief reminded her that she had been cheated: she had earned her rest; she had earned the chance to see Coulson again. 

And then she did. Daisy had warned her, had told her what the team had done and why, but seeing him again, wearing a tailored suit like he hadn’t in years, that face looking at her now with eyes that were full of kindness and warmth - after last seeing that face twisted rage as it betrayed her - nothing could brace her for that. She cried right there in the hall, deep guttural moans that drove her to her knees. She missed the grief that etched itself into Coulson’s face before he allowed Mack and Simmons to lead him away. 

Daisy stayed with her until long after the weeping stopped. The two women sat with their backs against the wall, hands intertwined.

“I’m not sure I can do this again,” May said finally.

Daisy’s eyes filled with tears as she thought about how she’d taken the final step to bring Coulson’s LMD into their lives.

“You said yourself that if you had a chance to get him back, you would,” Daisy said, her voice pleading.

May took a deep shuddering breath.

“Oh Daisy, I’m just so tired.”

Daisy looked over May’s tearstained face and felt more of her world shift beneath her. May and Coulson, and their constant, steady strength, had served as the foundation she’d come to rely on when everything else came crumbling down around her. Now Coulson was not Coulson once again and May, though admittedly alive and in her original form, was not May. Daisy pushed back against her terror at the thought of losing them both. She’d had enough of that too.

She rested her forehead against May’s and tightened her grip on the other woman’s hands.

“Please,” Daisy whispered. “I need you both so much.”

May said nothing but when they finally stood and wiped away each other's tears, she let Daisy lead her to the rest of their team.

They’d told him what he was. The team had filled in his memories with as much data as they could assemble between them, though of course there were gaps. No matter how they tried, he was never going to be the Phil Coulson they last knew.

After three days of giving May as much physical distance as was possible aboard the aircraft and accepting her silent, flat stares at his every attempt to speak to her, Coulson braved her wrath and visited her in the small room she’d claimed as her own.

She allowed him in and sat as far away from him on the small bed as she could manage. They sat in painful silence for several minutes before Coulson cleared his throat, drawing May’s eyes back to him.

“Apparently I died, again, while we were in Tahiti,” he said. She looked at him and said nothing. He shrugged and smiled at her sadly. “Sorry.

“Fitzsimmons gave me what information they could about the past few years, but there are gaps,” Coulson told her. “My own perceptions, feelings, private moments between others on the team, that’s all missing. My time with you is missing. The team tells me that we, you and I, may have taken a few steps forward before I died.”

May turned to stare at the wall and let her thoughts drift back to the house in Tahiti, to bare legs tangled in a thin sheet, Phil’s arms holding her firmly against the bed, his mouth leaving heated kisses across her chest.

“A few steps, yeah,” she said flatly.

Coulson swallowed and looked away awkwardly.

“I don’t know how we got there exactly,” he said, “but I’m glad. I always -”

“You want to know how we got there, Coulson?” May interrupted him, swinging her head around to pin him with her eyes, her voice shaking with barely contained anger. “We got there because we went through months of non-stop hell and then the team found out you were dying and lying to us about it. I told you how I felt and had to _beg_ you to keep fighting and in the end we got five months on a goddamn beach where we lived and fucked and then I watched you die.”

She spat out the last few words while Coulson stared at her, mouth hanging open. He tried to speak but she kept going, the grief pouring out with every bitter word.

“I buried you and I grieved for you for a full _fucking_ year and then Sarge showed up and I tried like hell to find you in him and a lot of good that did me. I fought to get you back and for that I got to look into your eyes while he ran me through with a sword.”

Coulson’s expression, startled and a little frightened when the tirade first began, had softened into a deep sadness, making him look more like the man she’d known in his final days. 

“And now there’s you,” May was beginning to run out of steam and was on the verge of tears as she looked him over. “I thought I was finally done. I let myself hope that Sarge was the second chance at having you back, and when he remembered me and Daisy I thought there might be a way. But now…”

She turned her palms up and shrugged helplessly. Coulson’s chest tightened as he took in her devastated expression. When he spoke his voice was soft, but his words were earnest.

“I know I’m not exactly human, hell, how long has it been since I could say I was? I know I don’t have any of my own memories of the past few years, but I have all the memories of the man I was before. And I know how that man felt about you. I know how I feel about you now.”

May’s jaw twitched but she said nothing. Coulson sighed and continued.

“I can’t even imagine what you’ve had to endure over the past two years and I wouldn’t, don’t, blame you for hating what I am now,” he told her. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn't want my partner back.”

May turned her face away and they sat in silence for a few moments. 

“I said it first you know,” May said without turning.

“What’s that?”

“I love you,” she replied. “I said it first. You were kind of an ass about it to be honest.”

Coulson let out a shaky laugh.

“Well you were always braver than me,” he told her. “Did I, uh, ever say it back?”

May looked down at her hands and let her thoughts stray to Tahiti once again. Phil’s lips on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her as they stood in the doorway of the little house, looking out towards the beach. His lips skating across her ear as he shared in whispers everything that had been resting in his heart.

“Eventually.”

When she finally glanced back at Coulson he was smiling at her. She rolled her eyes and turned away again so he wouldn’t see how her lips twitched in response. After weeks of carefully studying Sarge’s angry features for any sign of Phil, this open, gentle face was unsettling. And familiar. It was terrifying how easily she felt herself slipping back into a rapport with him. 

When he left, May curled into a ball on her small bed, helpless against the onslaught of memories that came for her. The final flash of recognition in Sarge’s harsh features before she felt the sword run through her. Reclining on their chairs in Tahiti and feeling Phil’s hand grow limp within her grasp and knowing without turning to look that he was gone. The swoop of terror and pain that filled her chest as she heard the news: Coulson was KIA; the Avengers Initiative was a success but Agent Phillip J. Coulson was dead. 

May rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling as hot tears wound down the sides of her face and curled themselves into the shells of her ears.

_Fury looked down to where she lay sprawled atop the bed in her dim apartment, his expression impatient but not unkind._

_“You gonna lay there and cry all night about what’s already done or are you gonna get out there and watch his back this time?”_

_May pushed herself up on one arm and glared at him._

_“Fuck you, Fury,” she said, her voice raspy from days of weeping. “I don’t know what you’ve done to Phil, but whatever you’ve brought back can’t be the man we knew.”_

_Fury knelt down beside the bed and leaned forward so mere inches separated their faces._

_“You listen to me, Agent May,” he said. “I know you came back from Bahrain feeling like hell itself had stared into your soul. I know you pushed away everyone who could possibly help you and I accepted it when you requested a transfer to a cubicle where your skills would never again see the light of day. You gave up on yourself so I did too. But Phil Coulson has never given up on you, not for one goddamn second. It’s time you got your ass out of that bed and returned the favor.”_

May took a shaky breath in and let it out in a harsh laugh.

“Goddamn it, Fury,” she whispered to the empty room. “You never said how many times.”


	2. Chapter 2

When May knocked on his door the following night, Coulson let her in without a word. He felt more than a twinge of apprehension at the determined look on her face, but he knew better than to open his mouth before she had her say. The silence was less painful than it had been the night before.

“This is the last goddamn time,” May said finally. “I’m not going to watch you die and then wait for the next twisted version of you to come back. Not again.”

“I don’t want that for you,” he replied. “I never wanted any of this for you. Melinda, I am so sorry. You deserve so much better-”

She felt tears stinging at her eyes at hearing her name spoken by that familiar voice and cut off the rest of his words as she covered his mouth with hers and pushed him against the wall.

Coulson’s hands fell to her waist as she pressed herself against him. He matched her fervor as their kiss continued but he pulled away as her hands moved to the buttons on his shirt.

“We don’t have to-”

May stepped back and looked at him with hard eyes.

“Not that I don’t want this!” Coulson assured her. “I’ve wanted this for a long time, but I told you, I miss my partner. I want you beside me, Melinda, in whatever form that takes now that I’m...whatever the hell I am.”

May glared at him. 

“No,” she said firmly. “No more steps back.

“I know you kissed my LMD, and I’m pretty sure you still have those memories.” Coulson squirmed guiltily at that and she ignored him. “I’ll never know what that kiss was like. You may not know this, but you kissed the hell out of me in the middle of a firefight in space. We spent months together in Tahiti, months you’ll never experience. If we’re going to build something together as we are now, we have to start taking steps forward.”

Coulson paused for just a heartbeat after her speech before he took her face in both his hands and pulled her lips back to his. 

They shed their clothes as they moved towards the bed. As May’s hands pushed Coulson’s shirt over his shoulders, she recoiled and let out a startled laugh that ended in a sob. The scar was gone. 

Coulson looked down and gave a humorless laugh.

“Yeah, they made some improvements I guess. It’s strange though, not to have that. Awful as it was, that was a part of me.”

May stared and her trembling fingertips ghosted across the blemish free chest of the Coulson before her.

“It was black,” she told him, voice shaking. ‘When the Ghost Rider burned through the serum and the poison took over, the scar turned black and it spread across your body.”

Coulson pulled her into his arms and held her as she grounded herself. He kissed the top of her head and felt her hot tears land on his chest. May let him pull her down beside him on the bed and her hands moved lightly across his chest, mapping this new skin, her fingers dancing lightly across his back as she braced herself for the unfamiliar smoothness she knew she would find there.

Coulson watched her face as she touched him, and when her eyes finally met his, he allowed himself to discover her as well.

It was so familiar, Coulson’s hands and mouth on her body and the look of awe and devotion in his eyes as he explored her. As this Coulson’s hands slid down her legs, fingers caressing the thick scars on her thigh from her first visit to space, she thought back to their cabin on the beach and Phil’s lips on that mark as his fingertips danced along the back of her leg.

_“You’re astounding,” Phil told her, pressing gentle kisses to the ugly, puckered skin. She brushed her fingertips through his hair and smiled softly._

May pulled her mind firmly back to the present and the Coulson with her now but her heart ached as she felt him touch her with the same care and reverence that Phil had shown in their time together.

She gasped as he entered her, her leg hitched over his as they lay on their sides, his length sliding into her slowly, filling her in a way that was welcome and familiar.

He groaned as their bodies came together and had to pause to take a few steadying breaths.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s been a while.”

May laughed at that. 

“That’s what you said the last time too,” she told him, her voice unsteady with laughter. “At least that body had actually had sex before.”

Coulson rolled his eyes and kissed her, swallowing her laughter. When he shifted them so that his body moved above her, May felt herself tense and considered flipping them, but the face above her was one she trusted - one she seemed destined to trust, no matter who wore it.

So instead she moved her hands down to his ass and pulled him in deeper. She buried her face in his shoulder as she countered his thrusts with her own so she wouldn’t see the softness and longing in his gaze. 

Through the flush of pleasure that coursed through her she couldn’t be sure which Phil she had been thinking of when she gasped, but his name was on her lips when she came. 

She let him hold her afterwards, though she felt a clutch of panic after the tenderness they had shared moments before. He had at least taken the side of the bed next to the wall, giving her an easier means of escape if she wanted to take it. May calmed herself by matching her breaths to his, allowing her body to fall into sync with the Coulson beside her.

He brought his left hand up to brush the hair from her face and she caught his thumb with her lips, pulling it into her mouth and caressing it with her tongue before biting down softly. He groaned and his hips jerked against her thigh. He was half hard again already.

“You could feel that,” she commented. “They gave you a new hand too.”

“Hmm,” Coulson replied. “I don't mind that change as much.”

May snorted.

“Can’t say I agree,” she told him. “We made good use of some of that hands...bonus features, while in Tahiti.”

She turned her face towards Coulson so he could see her smirk and found that his mouth had fallen open slightly.

“Damn,” he said finally. “That guy really had it all, huh?”

“For a little while,” she replied softly. He smiled sadly, then looked away and cleared his throat.

“Would it be okay if I, um, if I said...” Coulson stumbled a bit then flashed her a nervous smile and she knew exactly what he was getting at. “I don’t have any memories of what it’s like to tell you, and I’d like to...very much.”

May said nothing but tilted her head to the side slightly and he took that as assent.

“I love you, Melinda.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply.

When she opened her eyes again, Coulson was watching her closely. She knew he was waiting for her to reply, and they both knew she couldn’t. She leaned closer and brushed her lips across his. 

He held her face as she began to move away and kissed her again, pressing her down into the pillow as he placed his hand on her throat. She moaned into the kiss and his hand moved lower, laying heavy on her breasts before continuing its path down her torso. As it reached her stomach, May grabbed his fingers and held them against the smooth skin below her navel.

“It’s gone,” she told him, breaking away from his lips. At his questioning look, she explained. “The stab wound, from Sarge. The sword went all the way through, but whatever Simmons did to bring me back closed the wound completely. It’s like it never happened.”

Coulson laid his hand flat against her stomach.

“It did,” he told her, his eyes blazing with a sudden intensity. “Our lives have been upended more times than we can count, and they can take away the scars but all that pain, all that sacrifice, it’s made us into who we are now.”

He held her gaze and as the pain in her heart became nearly unbearable, she heard her own voice ringing clear and hopeful through her mind.

_That’s love. That pain is love._

May pushed against his chest and flipped their positions in one fluid movement. This time she kept her eyes trained on his face as their bodies came together, knowing it would be his name on her lips as she fell apart.

When she eventually collapsed onto his chest, Coulson wound his arms around her back to keep her close.

“I love you, Phil Coulson,” she whispered into the warm skin of his neck. His arms tightened around her, and this time the tears trailing down her cheek were not her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We've got a long way to go until season 7, so let's all keep showering May with love and make sure she has space to grieve and find peace before the writers put her through hell again!


End file.
